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Fly Away
:Fly away little bird :Find the song in you that no one's heard :Strengthen your wings as you sing your solo flight :Through this short life :Everyone's got a deep regret :We try to ground ourselves to forget :But your race to the end is neck and neck :You love then, you love them not... Chapter 1 - When Life Gives You Two Paths... There was a (very) brief time in which Lela fancied herself a philosopher. She would stuff herself full of stolen words and regurgitate them at will. One of her favorites was this: 'If ever in your life you come across two roads take the one to the right.' This was a slightly altered version of my father's 'When you come across two roads in your life, take the one less traveled. Less cats.' I never really understood either of them. Which is a shame, because now I have an actual problem. And since they threw me to the foxes, all I have to go on is their stupid 'advice'. Hrmph. I don't want to go back to RiverClan camp just yet, so I wallow by the Stepping Stones, paws playing lazily in the water. Not paying attention. Cobweb wants me to meet him. There's a high probability of it being a trap. In the half moon since our last encounter, I've become something of the anti- Cobweb. Different side of Twolegplace, but a leader none the less. I hate it. Thorn finds it amusing though. Thorn...I close my eyes and sigh. I didn't grow up with Thorn, didn't play with him, didn't lose him. Didn't fail to save him. But he's become my best friend in the void Cobweb left, not an easy spot to fill. If I meet Cobweb am I betraying him? I violently shove that thought away. I don't have time for dramatics. Thorn will just have to deal with it. A prickle of guilt nags at me, but I ignore it. I stand, pacing. I mean, I have to hear Cobweb out, right? He was my friend. Maybe he wants to...I don't know, surrender or something. I sigh and roll onto the grass, burying my head in my paws. Chapter 2 - The Enemy of my Enemy is Still Annoying "Is someone there?" Jinx meows sleepily. Her right eye is blurry with sleep and her left covered by a massive scar. Jinx lost an eye fighting at the ShadowClan raid. The she-cat is just as fierce as she once was, but now with a certain brokenness. "Shhh," I meow. "Firefly?" Jinx narrows her good eye, "What in the name of all that is-" "Come with me," I half drag her out of the warriors den and into a clearing by the camp. "Let me go," she mutters, jerking away from me. "What do you think you're doing?" "I need to tell you something." "Couldn't it wait til morning?" she mutters in annoyance. "It can't," I meow apologetically, "Listen, I need to go away for a night or so." "Ooooooh-" "Shut up!" I hiss furiously, "Anyways, if I don't come back, tell Thorn that I went home." "Went-" her eyes narrow even further, "What are you doing Firefly." "You don't need to know. And I can't tell you. So just remember that, would you?" "Firefly, whatever you're thinking, the Clans need you. The-" She stops when my paw crashes into her skull, a trick Hawk-eye taught me. She hits the ground, unconscious. "Really hope she remembers that when she wakes up," I mutter. I hide her as best I can in the bushes, lest a fox or something finds her, and pelt away from the camp. I have a date. Chapter 3 - Home I'm not sure what to expect when I enter Twoleg place. Will Hawk-eye be prowling the alleys, looking for his lost daughter? Does Drakon's ghost haunt the streets, as he did in life until his son killed him? Will Lela be preening in that fragment of a mirror that once showed me to the world as a firefly? The alleys seem duller, the colors of the forest melting to gray and brown. Cracks are on the ground that I haven't seen before. This place is empty, only ghosts left. Drakon dead, Cobweb gone, Thorn gone, I'm gone. All the major players of my childhood now roam the forest, leaving this place dusty and forgotten. I slip through the buildings, passing dumpsters, all green. A single white memory flits through the mist, but I avoid it. That was where I lost Cobweb. Forever. In one direction is my home. In the other, Drakon's camp. Where Cobweb will be waiting. I pause at the alley that leads back to my own, wondering. My parents banished me, exiled me, threw me away once their glittering princess made them the laughingstock of their own cats and the target of Drakon's rage. If I go back, will they be there? Will they throw me out again? Would my own parents attack me? Only one way to find out. I race down the alley, paws thumping, heart racing. I'm being crazy, my parents will be thrilled to see me. Lela will comments about how my pelt looks sleek and how well fed I look. Hawk-eye will ask where I've been and what I've learned. Then we'll sit down and argue about which rat to eat. A thought stops me in my tracks. What if I take Hawk-eye and Lela to the Clans? Lela could help watch the kits and I'm sure my father would be able to help with the war efforts. I start off again, running instead of trotting. I turn into the alley, "Mom! Dad! I'm-" I break off, my heart crawling up into my throat and letting the words on my tongue die. The alley is empty, a thick layer of dust and grime covering everything I've known. The mirror that my mother treasured lies shattered on the alley, the faint impression of a pawprint still fresh on it's webbed and cracked surface. Chapter 4 - Impulse My parents might have... No. They probably just left in a hurry. I can picture Lela wailing as her mirror was accidentally crushed, Hawk-eye pulling her along. That's probably what happened. "I really am a princess," I mutter, "All looks and no brains. Minus the looks." In my troubled moment, the instinct to go to Cobweb is nearly overwhelming. But that also balances with the notion that Cobweb might know what happened to my parents. If anything happened. And there might be a reason he knows that- Stop it. I hesitate at the cross roads again, my heart racing. Cobweb or back to RiverClan? My heart chooses before my head does, and my paws carry me past the Marked Dumpster and over into Drakon's old turf. It's all empty. Everything. No more well groomed cats with gleaming eyes, no more warm feasts, no more organized camps. The empty shells that replaced the dumpsters look sad and the darkness shrouds Drakon's camp as it never did before. I slip through, just another ghost lost to the night. The meadow where Cobweb proposed to me isn't any better. The flowers are choked with weeds and the waterfall that once danced with twoleg lights and flower freely is dry, stagnant water pooling slightly in the bottom. I peer cautiously over the short fence that separates where I am meeting Cobweb from where I left him. The yard is empty. I land lightly on my paws and look around, "Cobweb?" I hiss. "Over here," His eyes peer out from me from the cat flap on the inside of the Twoleg den. I shiver and pad over. "Come inside," he meows, "I don't want anyone to overhear us. Someone might have tailed one of us." I nod and pad inside, the shadows of the den swallowing me up. Chapter 5 - It's a Trap Confession time- I've never been in a Twoleg den before. 'But Firefly! You're princess of the wrong side of the tracks, how could you not have ever been a twoleg den!' The answer is that twolegs scare the dirt out of me. Once, literally. But Cobweb is the only one who knows about that and there's no way I'm telling. I creep after Cobweb, my paws a heartbeat in a dead den. He begins trotting quietly up the stairs and I follow him, growing more and more nervous. "Cobweb, are you sure no twol-" he stops, slides through a door, and motions for me to follow. After a moment, I follow him. The room is dark, I can't see anything. My tail twitches. "Why did you come with me?" Cobweb asks. He sounds...different, his voice cracked and scared. "You're my best friend," I reply automatically. That's not strictly true, I came to spy on him. But he was my best friend, so it's not technically lying. "But after all the terrible things I did to you..." he breaks off and I shrug. The silence becomes unbearable. His eyes are tortured and he looks to his paw. When he looks up, they are resolved, cold. "Well we do have some things to discuss," he meows smoothly. "You've been quite a problem for me." "That's me, the trouble maker," I meow, trying to keep my tone light. He smirks, more like a fox then a cat. "Exactly." Cobweb throws his head back and lets out an earsplitting wail. He rushes past me, the air making my fur stand up. As soon as I realize what's happening, I run after him, but he's quicker. An unseen door slams in my face and I'm thrown to the floor, the left side of my ace aching. "Kitty?" I look up, alarmed. A little twolegs is sitting in her nest, looking delighted. "KITTY!" Oh ancestors no. I claw at the door. Grown twoleg meows join the little one and I frantically try to open the door, knowing it's futile. I am a colossal idiot. Category:Artimas Hunter's Fanfics